‘Hitler seldom let Morell out of his sight. And Hitler confided in this man. From time to time the stomach cramps returned. Morell makes a note of the fact that Hitler dated his trouble from the summer of 1934. A cryptic pencil annotation, in Morell’s writing, records that this was the time when Hitler had his best friend Röhm executed. Morell gave Hitler more and more powerful medicaments, like intramuscular injections for the gastric wall, and combined these with medicine that would make some of the vegetarian stuff he ate easier to digest.’

‘But why is all this sort of material in the medical file?’ said Stuart. ‘Why keep a carbon of a letter about the house he got from Hitler?’

The coffee machine in the kitchen hissed steam and switched off. Breslow fetched the fresh jug of coffee before answering. ‘Perhaps Morell had literary ambitions.’

‘A biography of Hitler by his private physician?’ said Stuart.

‘Churchill’s physician published such a book,’ said Breslow. ‘It was a best seller, as I remember.’

‘And no historian has ever seen this material?’ said Stuart.

‘No one knows it exists,’ said Stein. [1]

‘It was taken to the Kaiseroda mine?’ said Stuart.

‘This is what makes it so interesting,’ said Max Breslow. ‘Our film, I mean,’ he added hurriedly.

‘Yes, of course, the film,’ said Stuart. ‘You mean you have access to other material like this?’

Stein nodded and rummaged around the wrappers in the almost empty box of chocolate-coated cherries until he found one. He chewed into it and smiled as he saw Boyd Stuart’s look of consternation.

‘I’m afraid he’s quite right, Mr Stuart,’ said Max Breslow. ‘For better or for worse, reputations are going to be turned upside down.’

‘Hitler and Churchill, you mean?’ Stuart asked.

‘Drink your coffee and have one of those delicious chocolates,’ Max Breslow told Stuart. ‘We have done enough for one night.’

Stuart had a feeling that there were no chocolates left, and that Max Breslow already knew that.

The Marina del Rey provides a luxurious and convenient base for yacht owners who have business in Los Angeles, says one of the brochures. It is crammed tight with magnificent boats and surrounded by modern apartment buildings, as well as restaurants and discos, and has the swanky yacht club as a centrepiece. A Marina address is all you need to attract a lot of wisecracks about the swinging bachelor life. Certainly the Marina del Rey is a place where the number of people dressed in yachting attire greatly exceeds the capacity of the yachts. But Boyd Stuart liked living on the boat. It was near Culver City, Century City and Beverly Hills and conveniently close to Highway 1 which would take him to Malibu, to Santa Barbara, and beyond.

He swung off the San Diego Freeway at the Marina del Rey sign and tried to stop thinking about the documents he had seen that night. And yet he could not forget the smell of them and the way the brittle paper had crackled in his hands. ‘Outside of this room,’ Stein had told him, ‘it’s possible that there is no person still alive who has seen these documents.’ The short stretch of the Marina Freeway ended and Stuart began to count the apartment blocks. He still found it possible to get lost in this enormous city.

He left his newly rented car in the open parking lot. There had been muggings in the underground garage, and two o’clock in the morning was not the best time to be blundering round down there, worrying if the elevator was still working. He switched off the ignition and sat still for a moment. There was a full moon and he could have counted a thousand stars if he had had the time or the inclination.

Suddenly he noticed a cigarette lighter flare inside a car in one of the parking places near the yacht basin. Boyd felt a moment of panic, and cursed his foolishness in not bringing with him the pistol he had been given. Two men got out of the car but then, at a signal from the driver, the second man got back inside again. The man had walked halfway across the parking lot before Boyd Stuart was quite certain that it was his case officer.

‘Have a nice evening, Stuart?’ he asked as Boyd opened the window to greet him.

‘Have you been waiting here for me all night?’

‘No,’ said the CO. He walked round the car and got in alongside Stuart. ‘We took the liberty of putting a small device into your cassette player. It tells us where you are, give or take half a mile or so.’

‘Am I supposed to say thank you?’ Stuart said irritably.

‘It could prove a benefit to you some day,’ said the case officer. ‘Tell me what you talked about. This ex-Corporal Stein was there, wasn’t he?’

‘You are well informed,’ said Stuart.

‘But not quickly enough informed,’ said the case officer.

Boyd Stuart explained what had happened in considerable detail. The controller listened all the way through without interruptions or comment. ‘I don’t like the sound of it,’ he said finally.

‘You should have seen that stuff. It’s chilling to think what else those two might have tucked away.’

‘Are they after money?’

‘A film would focus attention upon the two of them. Stein and Breslow could spin this stuff out for years. The possibilities are endless: bestselling books to follow the film, radio and TV appearances, video cassettes-God knows what else they might have in mind. It’s not just the commercial possibilities… think of what world famous personalities Stein and Breslow would become. Can you imagine them in London on BBC TV, with the Foreign Office sending a spokesman to discuss the implications?’

‘I’ll buy it until something better comes along. Partners then, you think?’

‘Stein seems to call the shots.’

‘I wish like hell London would let us risk putting these two on the Washington computer. We know nothing about them. One glimpse of their tax returns might tell us the whole story.’ He searched his jacket pocket and then said, ‘Give me a cigarette will you? How I hate this lousy town.’

‘I’m trying to give them up,’ said Stuart.

The man cursed. ‘No matter,’ he said. Now that the air-conditioning was not going, the car’s interior was becoming stuffy. He fingered the window switch but thought better of it. ‘I dare say London will replace me very soon. It will be good to get back to Europe again.’

‘I thought you were Mexican,’ admitted Stuart.

‘You make a great secret agent, Stuart,’ said the CO mockingly. ‘I’m Hungarian. Ever heard of Györ? No, why the hell would you have heard of a dump like that? When I lived there, I’d never even heard of Los Angeles.’

‘You got out in 1956? In the revolution?’

‘Is that what it was? My appointments diary said fiasco.’

‘There are cigarettes on the boat.’

‘Screw the cigarettes, I’m a forty-a-day man already. Do you know, Stuart, there are days when I wish I’d never left home.’

It was said half in jest but the other half was suspended in the air between them. Some employees of the department would have thought it necessary to report such a remark, and both men knew it. For a moment they sat in silence. Then Stuart said, ‘Is that one of your people with you in your car?’

The CO seemed not to have heard him. ‘My father told me to get my mother and my sister across the border, and never mind him. He stayed there; my mother died six months later, in a transit camp in Vienna; my sister was so miserable that she went back to look after my father.’ He toyed with the seat-belt catch, clicking the belt, fastening it into place and releasing it. ‘1956,’ he said, ‘who can forget it? My Fair Lady got the New York Drama Critics Award, and Elvis sang “Hound Dog”. Everyone in America was reading Peyton Place and Yul Brynner shaved his head and got an Oscar playing the King of Siam in a musical movie.’